This is what happens when my depressed logic gets the best of me. My thoughts get twisted into a downward spiral that convinces me that I am the most worthless being on earth – AND that everyone should be giving me attention for it. Generally the convincing takes the form of telling me why I don’t suck, and my telling them why I do, for as long as I can keep them spending energy doing that. Needless to say this isn’t very good on friendships!

But let’s break this down for a minute. Piece of shit. Feeling like a piece of shit. Most people feel like one in some amount at some point. Some feel it worse than others – I’ve felt it bad enough to have been suicidal over it, multiple times. There’s a point at which it crosses the threshold of where someone appropriately trained should be taking a look at it (obviously suicidal counts, but the screening threshold is nowhere near that point).

The world revolves around. Most everyone hates that shit. We love to mock celebrities who (in our own glorified opinions) think the world revolves around them. From the latest untalented pop sensation to politicians who are convinced they can save the world, your soul, your bank account, your job, your business, your firstborn child, your unborn child, to anything else that you might need saved so long as it sounds good on camera.

Wow, those were harsh days and I have a lot of regrets for how I treated people, even when I didn’t have much control over my behavior or understanding of what was going on. Mental illness is, generally speaking, not someone’s fault, but it is their responsibility to take care of, within their capacity. It’s an explanation, but not an excuse.

So what caused me to become the POS the world revolves around? I’m not rightly sure. I can point to a lot of messed up things in my childhood and my genetics. I can point to the flawed coping mechanisms or weaknesses in social supports. All of these are things I know in clinical language only because I’ve learned some clinical language. I’ve learned that almost every “bad boy” goes into therapy thinking that they would have been better behaved if their abuser had abused them more. Yet clinical understandings aren’t always helpful; I have to regard my trauma as my own and not compare it to the many horrific traumas I know other people have been through.

I carry my experiences into my aspirations of clinical practice and think of what it would be like to handle my former self as a client. Maybe I’m not entirely over my narcissism, but I don’t think a therapist should enter this work without having thoroughly gone over their past to be aware of their weak spots (not necessarily to have resolved them all, sometimes that’s not possible, but to at least be able to work with them). The crisis protocol I have and talked about two weeks ago came largely out of this problem I had and have seen people do. I’ve been the friend that people have had to toss aside. There’s even possibly some people who might read this from a distance, who will understandably keep their distance, and to them, I say I’m sorry.